AI’s growing role in investment management has made strong AI governance, policies, and security controls a key focus of operational due diligence in assessing whether managers adequately protect proprietary and confidential information.
The 2025 Endowment Radar Study reveals a widening divide: well-endowed institutions have more capacity to deliver their mission, while those with smaller endowments face growing financial vulnerability.
No, we continue to believe the US dollar faces meaningful downside risks over the next few years and recommend that investors remain underweight the dollar in portfolios.
The war in Iran has triggered a historic disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil & gas prices higher and exposing vulnerable energy-importing regions. This shock is fueling concerns over higher inflation and rising bond yields, creating a volatile environment where commodities lead while global equities and traditional bond diversifiers underperform.
No, we do not think this is the likely outcome. While the path forward is highly uncertain, several key factors suggest that a repeat of pandemic-era inflation is unlikely.
Yes. Credit investors should be concerned about rising artificial intelligence (AI)-related debt issuance for several reasons.
No, we expect software investing to continue to loom large in private equity as it expands to incorporate the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence.
Our annual survey-based report summarizes returns, asset allocation, and other investment-related data for 326 endowed institutions for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.
Most endowments again reported double-digit returns in fiscal year 2025, and the profile of top-performing institutions also stood out this year. Many top quartile performers had high allocations to public equities, while there were also some endowments at the top end of the performance rankings that were among the highest allocators to private investments in our universe and earned strong returns from alternative strategies. To a greater extent than in recent years, there were multiple paths to be a top-performing endowment in fiscal year 2025. This section highlights the performance story of the past year and also looks at results over longer-term periods.
The choice of benchmark for private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) continues to be the most impactful decision when it comes to evaluating an endowment’s return versus its policy portfolio benchmark. In recent years where public equity markets outperformed private strategies, benchmarking PE/VC to a public index resulted in a high bar for a diversified endowment to clear. This section summarizes the various approaches that endowments use for benchmarking total portfolio performance and compares endowment performance versus policy benchmark returns.